Cameron Mackintosh confirms Miss Saigon's West End return, opens May 2014
Miss Saigon will open in May 2014 and is directed by Laurence Connor, who reconceived the show for its UK and international tour and also recently revamed Les Miserables (with James Powell) for its 25th anniversary tour.
Tickets go on sale on 9 September 2013.
Producer Cameron Mackintosh said: "Of all my shows Miss Saigon is probably the one I have the most requests to bring back. For some years I have been waiting for the perfect theatre to house the new production. These requests are not only from a public who remembers seeing it originally but from a generation of new audiences who were too young (or not even born!) to get to see it. Now that the very successful Jersey Boys has decided to move to a more intimate theatre I now have the perfect theatre – The Prince Edward."
Written by Les Miserables composers Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, Miss Saigon transplants the Madam Butterfly story to war-torn Vietnam. Cultures and aspirations clash when a local prostitute meets her GI Joe during the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Directed by Nicholas Hytner and produced by Cameron Mackintosh, the original production ran at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane from 1989 to 1999.
A representative confirmed to WhatsOnStage that the current Miss Saigon casting show in the Philippines is for a separate production and nothing to do with the London run.
Mackintosh said: "Ten years ago I decided to reconceive the show in a completely re-imagined physical production that could play a far greater number of theatres than the original but still retains Bob Avian's legendary musical staging and the same scale of cast. As well as touring the UK with enormous success the new production directed by Laurence Connor has been seen in numerous countries around the world where it has been embraced by audiences and critics alike with as much enthusiasm as the original.
"If anything the tragic love story of Miss Saigon has become even more relevant today. In the last 25 years our country has become involved in similar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the way we weren't in Vietnam and the American Dream has been buffeted by the reality of recent history. The new production has taken a more gritty and realistic approach to the design than the operatic original but still delivers the power and epic sweep of Boublil and Schönberg's great score."
The production will feature a new song, titled "Maybe", written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil for the role of Ellen to sing in the second act which has been included in the recent Dutch and Japanese productions. London audiences will be the first to hear the song in English.
Following the success of Les Miserables on screen, a film adaptation of Miss Saigon is also rumoured to be in the pipeline.
